British IT engineer James Howells, who lives in Newport, Wales, accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 7,500 Bitcoins during a house cleanup in 2013. At that time, Bitcoin was worth about 130 USD. But by January 15, its price had skyrocketed to 38,000 USD, meaning Howells lost Bitcoin valued at around 286 million USD.
Howells started mining Bitcoin back in 2009 using his personal laptop.
“By 2013, after I stopped mining Bitcoin, I sold that laptop on eBay. But I kept the hard drive with the Bitcoin just in case the cryptocurrency’s value went up someday.”
However, in mid-2013, during a house cleanup, Howells accidentally threw that hard drive into a trash bin at a landfill near his home. He later forgot about it due to family life and moving.
It wasn’t until the Bitcoin boom peaked at the end of 2017 that Howells planned to dig through the city landfill to recover the lost hard drive. But the plan is extremely challenging and costly.
“A modern landfill is a complex engineering project, and digging could cause environmental issues like toxic gas release and fire hazards. So this is a risky and expensive plan,” Howells explained.
The plan also faces resistance from Newport City Council. A council spokesperson said digging, storing, and handling waste could have “major environmental impacts.”
Still, James Howells hasn’t given up. Recently, he offered to donate 25% of the Bitcoin’s value (if recovered) to Newport’s Covid-19 relief efforts. In return, he wants permission to search the city landfill. He believes the hard drive might still work despite years buried under tons of trash.
“The hard drive’s outer shell might be rusty, but the internal disk where data is stored likely still works.”
Regarding the search costs, Howells says he has financial backing from a hedge fund and a detailed plan to “find the treasure.”
“Back in 2013, when a trash bin was full, it was numbered and moved to the open landfill, then buried. Each bin had a reference code indicating its burial location.”
“So if I can access landfill records, I can figure out when I threw away the hard drive, identify the bin’s serial number, and then locate its grid reference.”
However, Newport city officials have yet to approve Howells’ proposal.
“Newport City Council has been contacted several times since 2014 about retrieving a computer component believed to contain Bitcoin. The costs of digging, storing, and handling waste could reach millions of pounds, with no guarantee of finding it or that it still works.”
Source: The Guardian
